BP Oil Spill | Miami Herald

On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon wellhead exploded, causing the largest oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry. For 87 days, 4.9 million barrels of oil spread throughout Gulf of Mexico.

As an intern at The Miami Herald, I covered this story from the ground, sea and air.

In a time when backpack reporting was not common among newspapers and I produced multiple photo essays, more than 15 videos and articles that appeared across the entire McClatchy newspaper companies' products.

By traveling light, I was able to move quickly and adjust our coverage to the platform that fit the story best.

I used digital SLR cameras to shoot both photo and video, a new concept in 2010. That saved time producing content for multiple platforms and allowed me to work seamlessly between print and digital.

By establishing relationships with NOAA, The National Guard and Coast Guard, our team was able to break the story on underwater plumes of oil, profile communities that had been taken advantage of by restrictive buyout contracts by BP and produced dozens of features on the everyday lives of the people that call the Gulf of Mexico home.